Fantasy

As if I didn’t have enough creative ideas buzzing around in my head, a bus ride home from school yesterday spawned an idea for a brand new Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel. Problem is, I’ve only just published the first book in my existing Fantasy trilogy. I also manage this blog, manage So Powered Productions, use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and (soon) After Effects. I’m also at school half of the day and I work part-time. When will I have time to write something new? I honestly don’t know. All I can do right now is make notes in Notepad and save them someplace where I won’t forget about them. Sometimes I think I have just too many hobbies and not enough time to follow them!

“So you want to write a fantasy? Great! Where are you going to start?”

How does one answer a question like this? While I never had to answer this question myself, I can provide some ideas that may serve as inspiration for authors new to the fantasy genre.

When I started writing what became ‘Technically Heroic,’ I already had a few named characters to work with, as well as an enemy force. These stemmed from the stick-figure comic strips I drew for a year or two with crayons and paper. I simply took those characters and their basic weapons and dropped them into a Word document. While not everyone has that kind of foundation to build on, a similar result may be achieved through a brainstorming session in which you draft your characters, good and bad, and your storyline. If you want to take it a step further, craft your characters’ personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, then try to imagine the environment(s) they will live in. Now that you have all of this, you’re ready to write.

Now, don’t worry if you can’t quite imagine a plot or storyline. If you have your characters ready, try focusing on introducing them and writing their very first adventure. If you can do both at one time by starting the story in some kind of battle or fight scene, congratulations! You’re already on your way. Let the ideas flow from your imagination, all the while visualizing the scenario, and before too long you’ll have your rough draft, and a storyline will emerge. This approach is similar to how I wrote ‘Technically Heroic.’ I had characters, so I started writing a brand new story, with one adventure leading to another, and another, and another, until I had the rough draft of the first one. By then I was ready to continue to the second one, and then the third one, and I had drafted the entire trilogy. After finishing the draft of the third story, I went back and greatly revised the first one, introducing a couple new characters to comply with the trilogy’s storyline.

I hope that these tips will help you get started on your fantasy writing adventure, which is indeed an adventure worth taking up. Good luck!